Hard-wired communications

the new shoehorns

I’m not opposed to wealth. I’m not even opposed to conspicuous consumption. What I am opposed to is tastelessness; it’s an assault on the senses.

McMansions, for instance, are a blight on the landscape — well, what landscape? Those structures are built within centimeters of lot lines. Owners could mow their lawn with cuticle scissors, except they won’t stoop to yard work. So I’ll rephrase: a manicurist could cut the grass with cuticle scissors. The houses, meanwhile, are clustered so tightly together residents leaning out windows could shake hands with the neighbor. On each side.

I thought money was supposed to buy space, acres and acres of privacy behind hedges and gates and sniffy exclusivity. I was mistaken. Wealth is on ostentatious display in alarming and garish ways. I want it to go back to being tucked away in dignified elegance and suitably classy surroundings. But that could be the problem. Tony addresses are highly desirable and space is necessarily limited.

That doesn’t stop pretentious climbers, though, close is good enough for them. They troll around, buy a lovely home on the fringes, bulldoze it, and build a ghastly, towering monstrosity that stands out like a pituitary case. All that’s lacking is neon. It’s shameful.

Instead of looking noble and imposing and grand, they look like misfits or mausoleums. Pretentious misfits, at that. They aren’t homes, they’re freestanding inferiority complexes — monumental Donald Trumps. And we need them like a hole in the head. A return to our senses, that’s what we need.